LAWG Blog - Latin America Working Group

There Is No Turning Back Now: Honduran LGBTQ Activists Confront Oppression, Make Gains

by Danielle Marie Mackey on October 22, 2012

The Honduran LGBTQ community is a relatively young movement that faces overwhelming discrimination and violence in a post-coup nation. In the early years, the community was nominally tolerated; gay male hairdressers of the Air Force wives, for instance, competed as comedy acts in annual Air Force beauty pageants. It was not until the year 2000 that the first legally-constituted LGBTQ organizations appeared. Activists say that advances in human rights protections have historically been followed by waves of repression, but that the most recent wave—that which has followed the 2009 coup—is the most severe. The Diversity Resistance Movement (MDR for its name in Spanish) is an LGBTQ group that formed in the tumultuous wake of the coup. In June 2012, I sat down with three of its members—Roberto Canizales, a history professor at the National University; and Ever Guillen Castro and Jose Palacios, both advocacy officers with European cooperation agencies based in Honduras. The three long-time activists discussed everything from who’s behind the repression, to the recent murder of their friend Erick Martinez, to the hope they have for the future of their community. Visit MDR on Facebook or at their blog-news site.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Honduras

A Lawyer for Rural Justice in Honduras Slain

by Lisa Haugaard on September 25, 2012

On Saturday night, September 22th, 2012, after he attended a wedding, Antonio Trejo Cabrera was shot six times. He later died at a Tegucigalpa hospital. He was the legal representative of the MARCA campesino movement, and in June he had won the historic though still contested judgment in favor of returning three plantations to campesinos in Bajo Aguán.

“Since they couldn't beat him on the courts, they killed him,” said Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguan's peasant movements, cited in an Associated Press story. Trejo "had denounced those responsible for his future death on many occasions." Trejo also prepared legal challenges to a proposal by U.S. and Honduran companies to run privately-run charter cities that critics call unconstitutional, as they would skirt national labor and other laws.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Honduras, Lisa Haugaard

Sin País Airing on PBS

by Omar Martinez on August 02, 2012

As part of their Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program, PBS will be broadcasting Sin País nationally on August 9, 2012.

Sin País (Without Country) attempts to get beyond the partisan politics and mainstream media’s ‘talking point’ approach to immigration issues by exploring one family’s complex and emotional journey involving deportation.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Guatemala, Latin America, Omar Martinez

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator Airing on PBS

by Omar Martinez on June 25, 2012

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator will be nationally broadcasted on June 28, 2012 by PBS as part of the Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program.

In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efrain Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war against the country's Mayan people in the 1980s -- and Pamela Yates' 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble, provided key evidence for bringing the indictment. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator tells the extraordinary story of how a film, aiding a new generation of human rights activists, became a granito -- a tiny grain of sand -- that helped tip the scales of justice.

:2012, Being Better Neighbors towards Latin America, Blog Posts, Guatemala, Omar Martinez

Notes from the Evidence Project: Guatemalan Government to Dismantle its “Archives of Peace”

by Kate Doyle on June 06, 2012

In a surprise move, the Guatemalan government has announced the effective closing of the “Peace Archives,” one of the most active and important institutions created in the wake of the 1996 peace accords to promote peace, truth and reconciliation. According to Guatemalan press accounts, the Secretary of Peace Antonio Arenales Forno stated that by June 29 the government would “cancel [labor] contracts for which I see no justification and end the functions of an office that I find makes no sense.”